Harry Potter and the Menstrual Cycle
by BeccaBreaksThings
Summary: Alone with his children for a week, Harry Potter is faced with the unspeakable when his daughter comes to tell him she's 'dying.' Lily Luna's first period is far scarier than any basilisk.


"Dad?" Lily was white as a sheet, her eyes wide and hands trembling by her sides. "Dad, I think I'm dying."

Harry dropped his paper in an instant – the Prophet wasn't all that interesting, anyway. He was by his daughter's side in a second, warm hands on her shoulders to still her shaking frame. "What's the matter?" he asked, speaking slowly and calmly for her sake. It wouldn't be the first time James had convinced her she had some terrible illness because she'd coughed, sneezed, or hiccuped.

"I'm _bleeding_!" Lily's breath came in short pants as she tried her best not to cry. She was only ten years old, but managed to handle herself much better than either of her brothers when they were upset or angry.

Eyes trailing over every visible inch of his daughter, Harry Potter began to panic all on his own. It was the first time in weeks he'd had the kids all to himself, since Ginny had gone to spend the week with one of her brothers, and already he was messing up. "Tell me what happened, sweetheart."

"I went to pee, and-"

"Oh." Realisation struck and brought with it a rush of blood to Harry's cheeks. Having had no sisters or other close female relatives, he was a stranger to all things menstruation, and now he had to face it head on. Even before the two of them had known they were having a daughter, he and his wife made an agreement that he'd deal with giving 'the talk' and all things similar to a boy, and Ginny would do the same if they had a girl. She clearly hadn't gotten around to it yet.

Lily was only ten, for Merlin's sake, that wasn't nearly old enough. Was it? Harry didn't know. Where was Hermione when he needed her?

"_Dad_!" Lily had started to cry, salty tears trailing down her freckled cheeks. "Dad, what's wrong with me?"

Harry, not wanting his daughter to see just how embarrassed he was, embraced her and brought her tiny head to his shoulder. He rubbed soothing circles in her back. "Nothing is wrong with you," he said, hearing his own voice crack. "Nothing at all. You're going to be fine."

"But I'm bleeding!"

"That's normal." Harry cleared his throat. No sense in delaying the inevitable – he would have to try his best and hope it worked out. "When girls reach a certain point in their lives, they, uh, they change. Yeah. It's perfectly normal, happens to all of them. It means you're growing up."

Lily leaned back and wiped at her eyes, watching her bumbling father with eyes wide as saucers. "Even mum?"

Harry nodded, taking Lily's hand in his own – whether the gesture was for her comfort or his own, he wasn't ready to admit yet. A thousand basilisks would be far less intimidating. "Even mum, and when she comes back, she'll be able to tell you all about it. But for now..."

"How do I stop it?" Lily asked, quiet as a mouse. "Mum's going to be ages. What if I bleed to death!"

"You won't, promise." Harry pushed himself to standing and glanced around the kitchen. All he had to do was find where Ginny kept her... Merlin, he couldn't even bring himself to think of the word. Some father he was.

"Just wait here, Lily," he said, squeezing his daughter's shoulder on last time before he made his way over to the sink. Sure enough there, in the cabinet beneath it, were the monstrous blue packages he made sure never to notice in their shopping cart. The words printed on the plastic were foreign to him – super heavy flow? Was that some kind of hip street music? It sounded like something James would listen to.

Harry swallowed the reluctance which rose in his throat and took a wild guess, snatching up one of the 'normal' labelled boxes. He carried them back to where Lily was still waiting and held them out to her. "Here," he said, "these will help."

Lily looked down at the box like it was poison, reading the instructions on the back. "Really? They look like nappies."

The laughter that followed was two parts relieved, eight parts nerves, as Harry nodded in agreement. He was glad at least that she was just as clueless as him. "They sort of are, I guess. You go and, uh, clean up. I'll owl your Aunt Hermione, ask her to come over."

The prospect of Hermione visiting seemed to set Lily at ease a great deal, she even smiled. "Yes! Make sure she brings the doll she promised me!"

"Will do. Now you go do your thing."

"Harry!" Hermione narrowed her eyes at him from across the table. She'd spent the last half hour consoling Lily in the living room, explaining the basics of what her father was far too oblivious to know. "You can't just tell her to figure it out for herself. You're a grown man, you've got to know _some _of the facts of life. It's not hard."

"But-"

Hermione shook her head to silence him. Ron was sat beside her, trying not to laugh hard enough that his tea would dribble out of his nose. "I'm with you, mate," he said. "If it was our Rosie, I wouldn't know what to do, either."

"Ronald!"

"It's true." Ron shuddered at the thought. "Some things a man just shouldn't have to deal with."

"You're parents," Hermione said. "You should expect these kinds of things."

"We're men," Ron argued and set his mug down. "There's a limit to how much girly stuff we can do. Got to keep up the testosterone levels, right, mate?" He looked hopefully over at Harry, who only grimaced in reply.

Hermione sighed and rolled her eyes. As she dipped her head to take a sip of coffee, it was clear she was trying to hold in her own laughter. "The two of you are acting like children. It's like you never had The Talk."

"I didn't," Harry said.

"Me neither." Ron snorted. "I had brothers instead. Who tells a boy about all that period stuff, anyway?"

Hermione slumped her shoulders and looked for a moment like she was going to start banging her head against the wall. "I'm starting to think maybe I should, for your daughters' sakes."

"No!"


End file.
